Do we need to gold plate everything

As I work through the parklets for Manukau City Centre I was having a look through this yesterday: Home / Parks Hub / Informal Rec – Informal Recreation (Link). It had occurred to me while we are chasing quality park spaces for a growing Auckland the question is do we need to gold plate it?

That is do we need constantly “large” parks and “grand” playgrounds or can smaller be much better. And by smaller I mean sizes ranging from a parklet (about 6 metres by 6 metres) to a small park (anywhere between 16m x 16m (256m2) and 510m2 (your average section size in Papakura). Of course there will always be places for a medium park (32m x 32m (1,024m2 or 1/4 acre)) and larger parks approaching the one hectare in size and more.

I cast my mind back to Sim City 4 when you had the options of different size parks ranging from the single tile (16m x16m) up to larger parks that you could mix and match to make even bigger parks. Yes I placed larger parks and even grand “central” parks (and plazas) but the most common park placed was the small single tile park. Whether it was either (all single tiles): the open grass space, playground, gazebos, park, plaza or flower garden they were the most scattered throughout a city. That be residential, commercial and even industrial the small parks were there.

Why? Accessibility and equability to all citizens. Meaning you often had to go no further than 800 metres at most (usually 400 metres average) before you came across a piece of green space. The beauty in the small parks was their simplicity, their cost to maintain (that is not much), their benefits to the surrounding area, and most of the usage gotten out of them especially for informal recreation.

The Auckland Design Manual around ‘Parks – Informal Recreation‘: “Flexible spaces enjoyed for informal recreation, typical features include: flat grassy open spaces, beaches, play spaces, or picnic areas“.​

Flexibility a big key and something I am chasing with the parklets for Manukau. Flexibility be reached with the small parks as well especially if an ambitious planner links them up within a neighbourhood forming a network.

In any case small is better and sprinkling more small parks (that are designed well) around urban Auckland would be more beneficial for quick wins then the big gold plating parks we seem to be doing. Start small folks then work your way to go large.